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ChatSpace, the product, was one of the earliest names in the online community market when it was launched by ChatSpace, the company, in 1998. Five years later, many of the other names in the space are long gone and ChatSpace, the company, now goes by the moniker Akiva.

ChatSpace the product has just gone to Version 4, which aims to make the chat, instant messaging and message board technology a more out-of-the-box package for those building online communities.

In the meantime, Akiva has expanded its collaboration offerings to include WebBoard, a message board tool that comes in several editions, and ideaCenter, a full-fledged virtual workspace. In April, Akiva released WebBoard Meeting, an online meeting application to compete in a rapidly changing market that includes WebEx and Microsoft's Placeware.

ChatSpace 4.0

Many of the improvements to ChatSpace aim to ease integration of online communities, through expanded support of style sheets, for example, and to add more functionality for administrators and moderators.

For integration, a "Community Groups" interface has been added, which ties ChatSpace chats and message boards together into categorized, named groups. Single sign-on is now available so users of a Web site that requires them to sign in do not have to sign in again to use chat and group features.

Enhanced management reporting includes additional information for abuse tracking. Time tracking can be used to set a maximum "allowed time" for individual members. Administrators now also have the option to observe members' activity on the site without being seen.

ChatSpace Community Server contains an array of real-time community applications including chat, message boards, instant messaging, live events, and queued help.

ChatSpace drives the online communities of FreeServe, the U.K.'s largest ISP; Primedia's About.com; and Sony Entertainment. Akiva also has a number of corporate customers that use ChatSpace for online collaboration on their intranets. Boeing uses ChatSpace so its employees can keep in touch with its corporate library staff.

Version 4.0 aims to make the functionality that drives some of the Internet's largest online communities available out-of-the-box. According to Akiva's CEO Eric Olinger, the online community space has a lack of turn-key solutions.

"We've been providing these capabilities for several years now," Olinger said. "What we've done with the 4.0 release is make those kind of things available to our customers."

Pricing for ChatScape 4.0 is based on the total number of active accounts. It is available only for the Windows platform.

WebBoard Meeting

With April's release of WebBoard Meeting, Akiva is jumping into the online meeting market quickly getting crowded with products marketing themselves as alternatives to WebEx.

How active is the online meeting market? WebEx itself has bundled together its offerings into an Enterprise Edition. Microsoft went and purchased PlaceWare. SiteScape turned to Centra to OEM its eMeeting application for its Enterprise Forum collaboration product.

It's no wonder that when talking about collaboration Olinger said the online meeting aspect is "what's hot right now." In addition to a market growing from companies tightening the purse strings on corporate travel, Olinger also looks to Akiva's existing customer base to expand their collaboration efforts to include online meetings.

WebBoard Meeting is an in-house server software solution that hosts highly interactive Web-based meetings.

The subscription plan that WebEx uses for its customers is one of the areas that potential customers in the online meeting market scrutinize. "WebEx has been very successful," Olinger said. "But now the market has settled and people are looking for the value proposition."

The WebBoard Meeting application is similar to many of the other online meeting applications in its features. It includes voice and keyboard chat; whiteboarding; co-browsing; remote control of participants' browsers; record and playback; true color support; address book integration with Microsoft's Outlook; file broadcast; and optional video conferencing.

As for pricing, WebBoard Meeting tries to be more flexible than its competition by offering at least 10 concurrent user licenses. A 10-license package, for example, lets any 10 people participate from any PC.

For a complete review of Akiva's ChatSpace Community Server, visit internet.com's ServerWatch.